1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates generally to the field of image processing. More specifically, the invention relates to the enhancing of images.
2. Related Art
The goal of image enhancement is to process an original image (such as that captured by a scanner or digital camera) in a manner such that the processed (i.e., enhanced) image is more suitable for a desired application. Generally, image enhancement covers various techniques to improve the visual appearance of the original image or perhaps to convert the original image into a form better suited for human and machine analysis. For instance, image enhancement may be used to clarify image details that are blurred due, for example, to a focusing. Such removal of "noise" from the image is often an inexact process leading to inadvertent removal of important image information along with noise. Recently, more advanced approaches at noise removal image enhancing have been developed such as "A New Edge-Detection Based Noise Removal Algorithm," Ser. No. 08/986,761, filed Dec. 8, 1997.
Even with such developments, image enhancement is an inexact science. A major hurdle in image enhancement is the characterization or prediction in an image of accurate image details and false image details. For instance, in one image what may be detected as a bleeding of colors may be natural progression of color in another. Some image enhancement techniques operate upon an entire image in its original form, however, most operate upon a "color interpolated" version of the image. This is particularly true of digitally scanned or captured images which are captured in a Bayer pattern. In the Bayer pattern, each pixel location has the intensity level only one of three color components Red, Green or Blue. The Bayer pattern image is then "color interpolated" such that each pixel's missing color components are approximated to give each pixel a full "color" (Red, Green and Blue intensity). However, such techniques often introduce error or noise. Thus, enhancing an image after color interpolation may not yield very accurate results due to possible distortions relative to the captured image. Thus, there is a need for a general framework to perform image enhancement so as to increase the techniques effectiveness.